Friday, March 6, 2009


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 Next 100 Articles > 

Through its various agencies and treaties, the United Nations seeks to undermine individual, as well as national sovereignty.



The financial events that have taken place in the U.S. and around the world over the last few months are, in many ways, no surprise.


It's emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.

Brewster Kahle wants to create a free, online collection of human knowledge. It sounds impossibly idealistic—but he is making progress

The Pentagon is pioneering micro technology for just about every device, from 10g video cameras to tiny atomic clocks on a chip


Reserve soldiers training for terror attacks, disasters on home soil

China will transform its military training based on mechanized warfare to that based on informationized warfare, according to a government work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at a parliament session Thursday.

Russia is working to develop anti-satellite weapons to match efforts by other nations, a deputy defense minister was quoted as saying Thursday.

Raytheon announced Monday it has finished performance tests on an infrared missile-warning sensor capable of scanning an entire hemisphere from a single space-based telescope.



The private meeting is highly unusual because Mr Obama will not be on a State visi

About one in eight U.S. households, a record share, ended 2008 behind on their mortgage payments or in the foreclosure process as job losses intensified a housing crisis spawned by lax lending practices, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Thursday

For those who argue that the rate of growth of economic activity is turning positive--that economies are contracting but at a slower rate than in the fourth quarter of 2008--the latest data don't confirm this relative optimism

European banks face a US dollar “funding gap” of almost $2 trillion as a result of aggressive expansion around the world and may have difficulties rolling over debts, according to a report by the Bank for International Settlements

Former Washington, D.C. mayor Anthony Williams is currently undergoing formation in the order of the Knights of Malta, one of the Catholic Church’s oldest and most prestigious organizations, despite his record of supporting unlimited abortion and same-sex “marriage.”


The numerous failings fuelled speculation that the attack might have been, at least in part, an "inside job". In previous terror attacks in Pakistan, the perpetrators appeared to have considerable intelligence about their targets. Car bombers have struck at army and anti-terror police headquarters in the past two years without the slightest hindrance.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors receives daily reports on loans to banks and securities firms, the institution said in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Bloomberg News.

Israel is seriously considering taking unilateral military action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, according to a report by top US political figures and experts released Wednesday.

Army chiefs are planning to use robots to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield. The mechanical surgeons and nurses - controlled remotely by humans over a satellite link - would be able to administer anaesthetic and perform life-saving operations in a mobile 'Trauma Pod'.

Puerto Rico's governor says more than 30,000 public employees could soon lose their jobs.

NEW powers to secretly search homes and computers of people suspected of crimes ranging from murder to organised theft are wider than those now used against suspected terrorists.The new covert search warrants would give police up to three years to delay informing targets they had carried out a raid on their property.

As TV makers ready 3-D models, a company called Dynamic Digital Depth claims its automatic 2-D-to-3-D conversion algorithms could help replace conventional TVs.

IBM is making it easier for widely dispersed businesspeople to interact and collaborate without the time and expense of in-person meetings.

Italy's Red Cross yesterday began its biggest vaccination programme since the second world war to immunise thousands of gypsy children in 50 or so camps around Rome. The operation began at Casilino 900, which is believed to be one of the largest gypsy settlements in Europe.

A virtual reality helmet that recreates the sights, smells, sounds and even tastes of far-flung holiday destinations has been devised by British scientists.


Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide “legal” rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.

Countrywide ex-president's new company seeks to make money from economic rescue.

A new operation appears to have been launched in the mass media mind control complex to make people believe that FEMA camps do not exist.


China is aggressively accelerating the pace of its manned space program by developing a 17,000 lb. man-tended military space laboratory planned for launch by late 2010. The mission will coincide with a halt in U.S. manned flight with phase-out of the shuttle.

Tokyo is preparing to deploy warships in the Sea of Japan with orders to shoot down any missile fired by North Korea that approaches Japanese waters or the mainland.

Following three months of investigation, California's secretary of state has released a report examining why a voting system made by Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold Election Systems) lost about 200 ballots in Humboldt County during the November presidential election

NBC's Tom Costello, on duty at the White House today, asked press secretary Robert Gibbsabout some comments made by his CNBC colleague Jim Cramer.


A controversial Italian doctor known for his work allowing post-menopausal women to have children has claimed in an interview to have cloned three babies who are now living in eastern Europe.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. managed to generate $5 billion in profit during the worst year in Wall Street history by trading over-the-counter fixed-income derivatives, two people with knowledge of the results said.

Erik Prince’s decision Monday to relinquish his role as chief executive officer underscored how hard the company now called Xe — pronounced like the letter “z” — is working to bury the Blackwater brand and move its focus further away from the security contracting that severely tarnished its reputation.

Under the program, the Fed will buy securities backed by different types of debt including credit card, auto, student and small business loans. The credit crunch -- the worst since the 1930s -- has made it much more difficult for people to obtain such financing , and those that do can be socked with high rates.


The memos provide a detailed glimpse into the thinking of Bush's Justice Department legal advisers. They embraced the view that President George W. Bush, acting alone, had the authority to override the other branches of government.

The Chinese government more than tripled its investments in the US stock market to $99.5bn (£70 bn) just months before the financial crisis, it has emerged.

Because digital video is cheap, Gates suggests putting cameras in classrooms to record regularly in all public schools

In an October 2001 memo released today, then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo advised the Pentagon’s top lawyer that the president may not only deploy the military within the United States, but it may ignore the Bill of Rights in the process of doing so.


The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced a newly-formed affiliation with the United States Power Squadrons (U.S. Power Squadrons) to support Citizen Corps, FEMA's grassroots effort to strengthen community preparedness through civic participation

Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have developed a "mega-laser" that may soon be used to probe the secrets of extrasolar planets.

SOCOM oversees the various special operations commands of the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Marines. It conducts both covert and overt missions, including unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance and psychological, direct action, counterterrorism and anti-narcotics operations.

Russia launched a carrier rocket on Saturday to send a military satellite into orbit, a spokesman for the Russian Space Forces said.

Is the world ready to let private military and security contractors participate in U.N. peace operations? When I ask this, I'm not talking about Hollywood celebrities calling for the firm formerly known as Blackwater to work in Darfur.

European scientists are starting to identify tangible health concerns associated with the use of nanoparticles in consumer products. Academic health experts within the European Union's scientific committee on emerging and newly identified health risks have raised some serious problems in a new detailed paper

Leaders sign agreement for an Asean community within next six years, with EU-style agreement planned by 2015

from the but-will-they-be-able-to-spot-political-corruption? dept

Steel and chemical factories, once the muscle of Ukraine’s economy, are dismissing thousands of workers. Cities have had days without heat or water because they cannot pay their bills, and Kiev’s subway service is being threatened. Lines are sprouting at banks, the currency is wilting and even a government default seems possible

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the U.S. is in the position to provide more help to Mexico in the fight against drug cartels operating near the U.S. border.

Brown will meet Obama on Tuesday and address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. Aides say he has both to demonstrate to a sceptical British public that he commands the respect of the president, and to persuade the American political establishment that global action is needed to rescue the US economy.

Historians will look back and say this was no ordinary time but a defining moment: an unprecedented period of global change, and a time when one chapter ended and another began.

Exploding pension fund shortfalls are blowing billion-dollar holes in the balance sheets of some of the Chicago area's biggest companies, forcing them to make huge contributions to retirement plans at a time when cash flow and credit are already under stress.

These show how the FBI traced the spores used in the attacks to a single flask at a US government lab, but they don't explain why the FBI made Ivins - who worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) - the chief suspect.


Mysterious Vaccine Court created in 1986 by the pharmaceutical industry, with the support of Congress, rules in favor of Bailey Banks against HHS.

The real estate market in Manhattan has become so unnerving to buyers that some are forfeiting six-figure deposits rather than close on deals they have made.

Brown says tougher regulation needed on global scale

A former member of an Israeli assassination squad has broken his silence for the first time. He spoke to Donald Macintyre


During the FIU New World Order Summit, a professor at the school named Dr. Mark B. Rosenberg raised the concern during a panel session about the possibility of a military coup taking place in the United States by the year 2012. This was not theorizing, he was simply citing a study that took place at the Army War College.

Gordon Brown has vowed to forge a “global new deal” with Barack Obama when he meets the new US president for talks in Washington this week.

Billionaire Warren Buffett said the economy will be “in shambles” for the rest of this year as financial firms take losses tied to reckless loans made during the housing boom.

We Are Change RI and Boston team up again to confront another NWO scumbag. This time John “it’s cool to torture children” Yoo is asked questions at Brown University. He dodges them with a catlike skill.

A variety of experts forecast continued doom and gloom for Russia’s economy, which has hit the skids since oil prices began plunging last year.

Will the economic and financial crisis degenerate into violent social explosions? Tomorrow, will there be civil war in Europe, the United States and Japan? That's the rather alarming conclusion that the experts of European think tank LEAP/Europe 2020 lay out in their latest bulletin dated mid-February.

The "mobile urban jails" will be used in targeted areas such as those rife with knife crime and anti-social behaviour or where there is no police station nearby.

And before a gathering of conservatives in Washington on Thursday morning, he suggested, as something of a joke, that President Barack Obama might learn a needed lesson if Chicago were destroyed by a nuclear bomb

Despite the problems of the ruble and the weak oil price in recent months for the Russian economy, the Russian Government is pursuing a very active foreign policy strategy.

The economy contracted at a staggering 6.2 percent pace at the end of 2008, the worst showing in a quarter-century, as consumers and businesses ratcheted back spending, plunging the country deeper into recession


Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike

President Barack Obama says he has no intention of reimposing the doctrine, but Republicans, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., say they still need a guarantee the government would not establish new quotas or guidelines on programming.

Previous Ban Expired in 2004 During the Bush Administration

The president and his CIA chief seem to be reading Foreign Policy Magazine, which recently suggested that the incoming administration change the nature of the daily intelligence updates to the White House

Iran/Contra whistleblower Celerino “Cele” Castillo III was scheduled to report to prison on March 5, but the power of justice has intervened on his behalf.

Mexico is sending up to 5,000 new troops and federal police to the country's most violent city, where law and order is on the brink of collapse in a brutal war between drug gangs aided by corrupt police.

If you were thinking that the only things we have to be concerned about include wars, famines, and economic crashes, think again.

Senior Pentagon officials have had to promise they will keep the details of the US military budget secret as the Defense Department prepares to make tough cuts on weapons programs, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he “absolutely” loves the idea of holding a constitutional convention to overhaul state government.

Reliance on drones technology is creating an unusual new generation of soldier, such as Private Joel Clark, a teenager who flunked out of high school but became one of the best drone pilots in the US navy

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that authorities had arrested more than 730 people across the country in a 21-month investigation targeting Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel and its infiltration into U.S. cities.


Antidepressant drugs, already known to cause sexual side effects, may also suppress the basic human emotions of love and romance.

Leaders of the G20 developed and emerging countries should not backtrack on their agreement last year to fight protectionism when they meet in London in April, the head of the World Trade Organization said on Wednesday.

A former Estonian defence ministry official who sold Nato secrets to Russia has been sent to jail for 12 and a half years after a secret trial

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation Gholam Reza Aghazdeh said the plant in the Gulf port of Bushehr could come on line within the next few months after Russian announced construction had been completed


A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records.

 Next 100 Articles > 

STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

 

By Geoff Metcalf

March 4, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." -- President Lyndon B. Johnson

Albert Einstein once defined “Insanity” as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That is precisely what the power crazed; myopic congressional democrats continue to do in reaction to their angst over the second amendment and the constitutionally reaffirmed God given inalienable right.

They ought to know better. Overwhelmingly, the American people have rejected the gun grabber’s pleas to disarm all except the government. Americans (even those who do not own guns) recognize that if government ever bans guns, only bad guys and a small contingent of police types, will have guns.

Among the gaggle of single issue voters (abortion, immigration, property rights, taxes, oil, military defense, etc.) guns and the Second Amendment advocates have been, and remain, the 800 pound gorilla.

Many of the single issue groups organize and make noise and/or videos, however, gun owners/supporters (more than any others), do way more than just make noise. They vote, and they get others to vote…and vote big.

An entire bumper sticker industry exists for pro-second amendment types. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, James Monroe, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry all trumpeted the refrain, "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

Jefferson quoted Cesare Beccaria’s 1767 words, "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."


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However, once again, an elitist band of sycophant liberals seems intent on compelling you to accept the gospel according to them. Notwithstanding the huge statistical data of empirical evidence offered (see Dr. John Lott's blogspot) to refute their quest they seek to return to the well.

Only a myopic fool incapable of learning form past scars would presume to package something as insidious as H.R. 45, Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009. Sponsored by Illinois Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush this omnibus gun grab seeks to “bring gun ownership in America to an end.”

Buried in the minutiae of H.R. 45 is the Brady crowd’s erotic dream:

• a national database of current firearm owners
• psychiatric testing 
• fingerprint requirements
• specific requirements and restrictions 
o on gun use 
o and storage, 
• and a whole lot more.

"It takes semi-automatic firearms and handguns – the guns people use for personal self-defense," Gun Owners of America’s spokesman said, "and sets up a licensure system, that is, the government would have to give you permission to own a gun.

The government can therefore also deny that permission, and it would mean an anti-gun administration could use it to effectively ban most guns from private ownership.

The key and tragic flaw of this plan is the conversion of a “Right” into a “Privilege.” If liberal Harvard law Professor Dr. Laurence Tribe’s recognition of the second amendment as an “individual right” were insufficient, the United States Supreme Court has finally acknowledged that fact.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but even the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights doesn’t “give” us ANYthing. The Bill of Rights merely recognizes God given inalienable rights. Rights that no one (least of all Congress) can either give OR take.

Despite H.R. 45 having remained dormant in the House Judiciary Committee since it was introduced, it remains like a rotting piece of fruit just waiting for the next gun scare or school yard shooting.

H.R. 45 is a do over of 2007's H.R. 2666, which contained much of the same language and was co-sponsored by 15 other representatives including Barack Obama's current chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel. H.R. 2666 was also assigned to the House Judiciary committee, where no action was taken. H.R. 45 currently has no co-sponsors and is likewise assigned to the House Judiciary committee.

Calvin Coolidge once observed, "It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones." H.R. 45 screams to be killed. In the Federalist, Number 46, it notes, the Constitution preserves "the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

We're all doomed - again

Leon Gettler
February 28, 2009

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Pundits are clamouring to explain why we're stuck in another financial mess, writes Leon Gettler.

The Return of Depression Economics
By Paul Krugman
Penguin Press, $26.95

The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown
By Charles R. Morris
Black Inc, $27.95

Bad Money
By Kevin Phillips
Scribe, $32.95

The Great Depression Ahead
By Harry S. Dent Jr
Schwartz Media, $29.95

In his darkest and most scathing novel, The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope looked at 19th-century London captured by financial speculators and a swindle based on a crooked railroad stock.

It's easy to compare the amount of money invested in Trollope's fictitious railway to subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations and the way loans in recent years were bundled up and sold to the market so that the money received came from other investors rather than profits, much like a Ponzi scheme.

Or compare Trollope's aristocrats clamouring to join the railroad's board, not knowing anything about the business but keen to profit from the soaring stock, to the way consumers in the recent boom were using their homes as ATMs, borrowing against their house and taking advice to buy shares with other people's money. Or the way banks and hedge funds seeking bigger returns ended up adding trillions of dollars to the public debt by investing in risky securities. Trollope's work is indeed a picture of the way we live now.

It's not as if we didn't have danger signals. Charles Morris, a former banker, makes the point that events such as the 1987 stock market crash and the collapse of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund in 1998 were practice runs. All reflected the shift to deregulation, the agency problem where companies, their employees and contractors could act against the interests of shareholders, and the mistaken belief that markets could be reduced to mathematical formulas. "All three of those trends ... flowed together to create the great credit bubble of the 2000s."

Adding to the problem was the way former Federal Reserve boss Alan Greenspan slashed interest rates whenever there was trouble.

As a result, Morris says, a lot of the so-called prosperity was like a Potemkin village - fake because it was based on massive consumer borrowing on bubble-priced assets. Once upon a time, a simple credit arrangement, such as a mortgage or credit card, was a matter between the borrower and lender. But it was taken over by Wall Street bankers who tied the loans together, "securitised" them and sold them to investors with the securities sliced up with different levels of risk.

If you wanted the biggest return, you went for more risk. Starved for returns, investors resorted to the old trick: borrow money, buy the riskiest shares and magnify your returns. That was cheap with low-interest rates and made worse by banks and hedge funds embracing little understood derivatives, ensuring the collapse spread right through the global system.

The tragedy is that this meltdown is likely to continue for many years. Harry Dent, an economist and forecaster, warns that if we thought 2008 was scary, it was just the beginning. He reckons that 2010 to 2012 will see the worst economic and banking crisis since the 1930s. Real estate will also collapse.

Basing his forecasts on economic trends, and history, Dent says there may be a recovery in the second half of 2009, but it will be short-lived and will fall apart because of inflationary pressures, interest rates and a commodity bubble.

That's when the worst of the depression will hit, continuing on and off until mid-to-late 2012. Where would be a safe place for money? Dent says cash, money markets and, on a lag, the highest quality government and corporate bonds. There will be a rally, probably from mid 2012 to mid 2017 and then a less severe downturn until about 2020, or possibly 2023.

As if that's not bad enough, he warns of the next dramatic terrorist attack or seismic geopolitical event between late 2009 and mid-2010, perhaps brought on by oil prices that he warns are likely to go to above $US180 if there is a significant recovery in 2009 coming from all the stimulus packages being introduced around the world. The next boom will happen from 2023 to 2036, if we live that long.

Kevin Phillips, a former senior strategist for Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign, cannot see the Obama Administration reining in the buccaneers. In the 2008 election, the Democrats and Obama himself were funded by financial services firms including hedge funds.

Phillips also looks at the inability of all sides in politics to come up with a policy on energy and oil, even though the future of the US energy supply, the value of the dollar and global warming are converging on the interplay of oil and US currency flows. America is vulnerable to peak oil, which will weaken the US dollar even further.

Phillips makes four predictions: Asia will dominate the global economy by 2030; China is the best bet to be the dominant power in Asia; a city with a large Chinese population, and not necessarily in China, will become Asia's leading financial centre; and the premier currency in Asia will have a leading reserve function to sit alongside the US dollar and euro by 2030.

Like Dent, Paul Krugman tracks economic meltdowns over the ages. History, as Mark Twain said, doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. Perhaps with that in mind, Krugman looks at the implosion of the Japanese economy 20 years ago, Asia's crash and the crises in Latin America in the 1990s, and Russia's troubled economy. He also casts his eye over other meltdowns such as the Panic of 1907 and of course the Great Depression, which "was brought to an end by a massive deficit-financed public works program known as World War II".

The truth is people have not learned from the past, and Krugman says we are now seeing a replay, writ large. "I'm tempted to say that the crisis is like nothing we've ever seen before. But it might be more accurate to say that it's like everything we've seen before, all at once ..."

To get out of this, we need huge spending to stimulate demand. And he says the US Government may well need to nationalise banks, reprivatising them when it is safe to do so.

Much of the problem comes from the massive growth of, and dependency of markets on, the financial services sector, which in the US accounted for 41 per cent of all profits in 2007. The irresponsibility of this sector ran in parallel with that of regulators around the world who adopted a hands-off attitude.

Blame much of it on the power of banks. Phillips reminds us of how the British colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, chastised bankers in 1904: "Granted that you are the clearing house of the world, but are you entirely beyond anxiety as to the permanence of your great position? ... Banking is not the creator of our prosperity, but is the creation of it. It is not the cause of our wealth, but it is the consequence of our wealth."